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Category: Associated Press

  • More than 50 kidnapped as violent gang attack in Haiti leaves 47 dead

    More than 50 kidnapped as violent gang attack in Haiti leaves 47 dead

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — At least 47 people were killed and more than 50 others kidnapped when armed men attacked a once-peaceful community near Haiti’s capital earlier this week, the United Nations said Tuesday.

    It is believed to be one of the largest mass kidnappings in Haiti in recent years, and one gang leader is threatening to kill the hostages if authorities kill any gang members as they try to secure the community nestled in the hills above Port-au-Prince.

    Sunday’s attack on Kenscoff pierced the belief that security in the troubled Caribbean country was improving.

    “This is a major political and security test, for the government, for the police, and for the international mission alike,” said Romain Le Cour, head of the Haiti Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

    He said the threat of executing hostages is a trap: If forces don’t act, they’ve failed to protect them; if they do and hostages die, the gangs will blame the state.

    Kenscoff resident Marc Paul, 42, said gangs kidnapped his brother, stepmother, stepfather, and two cousins. He said his 16-year-old niece also was kidnapped and raped but was able to escape and has reunited with him.

    “I had to run over bodies,” he said as he recalled how he ran during the attack. “I can’t sleep knowing all these people died.”

    Paul and his family had already lost their home to a previous gang attack in January 2025, but he said it was not as violent as Sunday’s attack.

    “It’s horrible,” he said, adding that he was upset about the video the gangs posted. “My brother is probably going to die.”

    A threat posted on social media

    In a video posted on social media, the gang leader threatened Vladimir Paraison, director of Haiti’s National Police.

    “Paraison, if any of our soldiers are hurt, I will kill all of them,” he said, referring to the hostages.

    The gang member identified himself as Izo 2, a reference to Izo, or Johnson André, one of Haiti’s most powerful gang leaders.

    Le Cour said Izo 2 is also known as “Didi” and leads the armed group in Kenscoff on behalf of and in coordination with Izo and other gang leaders.

    He said the aim of Sunday’s attack could be to force Haiti’s police and the U.N.-backed gang suppression force to disperse even more of their limited resources.

    “They don’t have enough personnel,” Le Cour said in a phone interview. “If you force them to deploy more troops, it would inevitably be at the expense of other areas.”

    The attack might also just be a show of force and a message to Haiti’s government and police as the country prepares to hold general elections on Dec. 13 for the first time in more than a decade.

    “This is a message to the government and the police that their claims of protection do not match reality,” Le Cour said. “The gangs are saying: When we choose to attack, we can, and we will succeed.”

    Attacks on Kenscoff have escalated

    The first major attack on Kenscoff occurred in January 2025, and since then, there have been sporadic attacks in the mountains surrounding the city center.

    But Sunday’s attack was the largest yet. At least five of the 47 people killed were children, according to the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, known as BINUH.

    U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the attack on Tuesday, noting that 22 of the victims were reportedly executed in a church compound where they had sought shelter: “The relentless gang attacks on communities and the loss of lives underscore the alarming security conditions in Haiti,” he said.

    Kenscoff Mayor Jean Massillon told the Associated Press on Tuesday that gangs set fire to 25 homes and killed two government employees including his cousin, who served as his security detail.

    “The atrocity of this crime reminds us that we have to continue working stronger every day to bring peace to the community,” Massillon said. “I’m optimistic that the state will continue working to eradicate the gangs in Kenscoff.”

    Gangs are coveting Kenscoff because it allows them to surround and control the upscale community of Pétion-Ville and alternate routes connecting Haiti’s capital to its southern region, said María Fernanda Arocha, a researcher with the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data.

    Between January and August this year, security operations had managed to reduce violence in Kenscoff by 66% prior to the attack, she said in a statement.

    “While security forces have concentrated their efforts on operations aimed at regaining control in the central areas of Port-au-Prince, criminal groups have instead sought to expand into rural communities that are vulnerable due to the limited response capacity of the police, but which remain strategic hubs,” she added.

    Haitians demand police protection

    Some survivors accused the government of not providing enough protection prior to the attack, with Haiti’s National Police rejecting those accusations.

    Le Cour said that if police and armored vehicles were indeed stationed in Kenscoff prior to the attack, then the assertion is concerning: “You let the gangs come in even if you had everything in place?”

    Armed men control an estimated 70% of Port-au-Prince and swaths of land in Haiti’s central region and beyond.

    Gang violence has displaced a record 1.5 million people across Haiti, where more than 3,050 people were reported killed from January to June and another 1,400 injured, according to U.N. statistics released Tuesday.

    The U.N. noted that nearly 800 rapes were reported from April to June, with 87% of those cases representing collective rapes.

    At least 81 people also were reported kidnapped during that time period, according to a new U.N. report.

    “These figures represent only a portion of the total number of people kidnapped,” it stated. “In many cases, victims’ relatives do not report kidnappings to the police or service providers and choose to negotiate directly with the kidnappers, believing that this approach allows for a quicker release and avoids possible reprisals.”

    The number of kidnappings reported from April to June represents a more than 40% increase compared with the previous quarter.

  • ICE arrests jumped to nearly 50,000 in July, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term

    ICE arrests jumped to nearly 50,000 in July, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term

    WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50,000 people in July, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration, according to new figures.

    The spike in immigration arrests shows that the administration has continued to advance its mass deportations agenda despite a shift in approach earlier this year from high-profile operations in large American cities that sparked a public outcry to arrests that have garnered less attention but have nonetheless been disruptive.

    The July arrest tally of 49,571 marks a 15% jump from 43,021 arrests a month earlier, and a 70% increase from 29,241 in February, in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in Minnesota, according to government data that was provided by ICE to the Deportation Data Project based at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA and analyzed by the Associated Press.

    As part of the surging arrest numbers over recent weeks and bolstered by a hiring surge, ICE has made arrests at traffic stops. The agency has increasingly relied on state and local law enforcement partners who are assuming immigration enforcement duties. And ICE officers have started to arrest people from Haiti who’ve seen their protections from deportation stripped away.

    The new arrest numbers show the administration “didn’t stop the enforcement,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for more immigration restrictions.

    “They changed the tactics and are, if anything, being more effective.”

    State partnerships becoming key to immigration enforcement

    Immigration arrests the month before President Donald Trump returned to office hovered at a little over 8,000, a figure largely made up of immigrants transferred from city or state jails and prisons and turned over to ICE to remove from the country. During Trump’s first year back in office, the numbers started climbing as the administration loosened restrictions on where and whom ICE could arrest while it also infused the agency with billions of dollars.

    By December, the number of arrests jumped to more than 40,177, according to the data, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Homeland Security largely stopped reporting immigration enforcement data at the beginning of the second Trump administration, making the data from the Deportation Data Project one of the few insights into how the agency is operating.

    In the aftermath of two fatal shootings in Minnesota in January that sparked protests and an uproar from Democratic lawmakers, arrests began to fall in February. After remaining stagnant for months, the numbers surged in June and then again in July.

    The number of arrests made by state and local police departments who partner with ICE has dramatically increased over the last year. Those partnerships, which ICE has grown with the help of generous financial incentives for participating agencies, accounted for 6,500 arrests in July, or about 13% of the total, the data showed. A year earlier, they accounted for less than 5% of ICE’s monthly arrests.

    Texas and Florida accounted for nearly 20,000 of the July arrests, in a sign of how important those states have become to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Both states have leaned heavily into those cooperation deals with ICE, known as 287g agreements, which allow local and state law enforcement to essentially operate as arms of federal immigration enforcement.

    That close cooperation is increasingly resulting in arrests like one last week in Florida’s Key West. The manager at the Half Shell Raw Bar said Tuesday that one of his staff members, a 36-year-old asylum seeker who fled Haiti in 2017 after receiving death threats, was arrested by local police and turned over to ICE.

    The manager, Bobby Kuchinsky, said the man had worked as a cook and supervisor at the restaurant and was the main provider of his family. Kuchinsky declined to identify the man out of concern for his safety while in custody.

    “He was an excellent worker, he learned very fast, he never had any problem with the law,” Kuchinsky said in an interview with the AP, noting that it will be a challenge to replace him. “He was a nice kid, he was a family man.”

    DHS secretary pledged quieter approach but mass deportations still a priority

    In his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pledged to keep ICE out of the headlines, suggesting that the administration’s immigration crackdown might take a softer approach. But his tenure has been marred by a number of fatal shootings of immigrants in encounters with ICE officers. And the figures show Mullin hasn’t shifted the agency from Trump’s vision for mass deportations.

    Under Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem, immigration enforcement was often characterized by high-profile operations that targeted specific Democratic cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. Operations, often led by former Border Patrol agent Greg Bovino, were blasted out on social media videos showing officers bursting out of moving vans to chase people or rappelling from helicopters onto apartment rooftops.

    But Krikorian said those tactics were “provoking a lot of ordinary people, turning them off even if they liked the idea of the immigration law being enforced.”

    New data shows most immigrants arrested didn’t have criminal history

    The administration has often said its immigration enforcement operations target people who have committed crimes in the U.S. as a way to make the country safer.

    But the data shows that more than half of those arrested in July had not been convicted of any crimes and were not facing any criminal charges. Less than a quarter of those arrested had been convicted of a crime.

    And half of the arrests were noncustodial, which means ICE agents arrested people in the community rather than someone already behind bars or held by local police.

    Patricia Quiñonez, a journalist at Utahzolanos, which covers the Venezuelan immigrant community in Utah, said immigration arrests during traffic stops have increased sharply in recent months.

    “They stop you for whatever reason — for example, you don’t have a driver’s license, your vehicle tags are expired, your windows are more tinted than what is allowed. From there, they take advantage of the situation and ask about immigration.”

    People with valid work permits and pending asylum claims are among those arrested, said Quiñonez, who believes they are being targeted by race.

  • Federal judge rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘miscarriage of justice’ claims and bid for prison release

    Federal judge rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘miscarriage of justice’ claims and bid for prison release

    NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to overturn her sex trafficking conviction and be freed from prison was rejected by a federal judge Tuesday who said the claims by Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime associate that new evidence had emerged were “demonstrably meritless.”

    Maxwell filed a habeas petition last December seeking to set aside her conviction and free her from a 20-year prison sentence, claiming exonerating information was withheld and false testimony presented at her trial, resulting in a “complete miscarriage of justice.”

    Judge Paul A. Engelmayer rejected her arguments, saying in his written ruling they “all or almost all are frivolous” and that she had presented nothing that could upend the outcome of her trial.

    “Nearly all its claims are procedurally barred; the overwhelming testimonial and documentary evidence adduced at trial conclusively established her guilt; and her petition’s claims are demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods,” Engelmayer wrote.

    A request for comment was sent to lawyers who represented Maxwell in the past.

    Habeas petitions are often filed as a last resort and to protect against unlawful confinement after appeals are exhausted, as happened after Maxwell’s conviction and sentencing.

    Epstein, a millionaire financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges. Ordered detained until trial, he was found dead in his cell at a New York federal jail in August 2019 and his death was ruled a suicide.

    Maxwell, a British socialite, was arrested a year later and was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021. She was moved from a Florida prison to a prison camp in Texas last year, shortly after she was interviewed by the Justice Department’s then second-in-command, Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney and now U.S. attorney general.

    The judge noted that many of Maxwell’s claims of “new evidence” stem from documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

    As a result of that law, the Justice Department over the last eight months has released 18 categories of investigative materials gathered in the massive sex trafficking probe, including search warrants, financial records, notes from interviews with victims, and data from electronic devices.

    Engelmayer said that material is “largely irrelevant to the charges against Maxwell and does not support her claims of error.”

    “On the contrary, to the extent it is relevant, far from exculpating her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges,” he wrote.

    The judge also rejected Maxwell’s claim that she was selectively prosecuted and made a “scapegoat” when the Justice Department did not indict four co-conspirators named in a government document or 25 men who settled with victims.

    Engelmayer said she could have raised that claim on appeal after her trial, but he found it to be frivolous nonetheless.

    Among the recently released Justice Department documents, “she does not cite any that reveals the existence of an uncharged confederate, let alone one as instrumental as she in facilitating Epstein’s horrific crimes,” the judge said.

  • Dolly Parton, superstar whose songs spoke to millions, dies at 80

    Dolly Parton, superstar whose songs spoke to millions, dies at 80

    Dolly Parton, the rhinestones-to-riches daughter of Appalachia who for six decades ruled country music with an outsize personality and country wit that enshrined her as one of the 20th century’s most cherished American originals, died Tuesday in Nashville, Tenn. She was 80.

    The death was announced in a video posted on social media by her nephew, Bryan Seaver. No cause was provided. Concerns about Ms. Parton’s health, which began last year as she postponed and later canceled a Las Vegas residency, grew to the point that she took to social media last fall to confirm that “I ain’t dead yet.” In May, she said she had responded well to treatment after, as she put it, her immune and digestive systems “got all out of whack” in recent years.

    Ms. Parton’s life, as depicted in autobiographical songs such as “Coat of Many Colors” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” was the stuff of make-believe, from her hardscrabble beginnings in Appalachia to her glittering stardom in Nashville and beyond.

    Writer Chet Flippo likened her to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Depression-era symbol of abundance personified by Ms. Parton’s voluptuous figure, rhinestone-studded stage costumes, and blond bouffant wigs. Her songs spoke to millions, confronting privation and loss even as they radiated possibility and hope.

    She was, quintessentially, a uniter of people. In 2019, the New York Times ran a story with the headline “Is There Anything We Can All Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton.”

    Ms. Parton cannily exploited — and transcended — rural stereotypes and kitsch to fashion a down-home chic entirely her own. (“A country girl’s idea of glam,” she called it in the song “Backwoods Barbie.”) In the process, she became an international celebrity who headlined stadium tours, starred in Hollywood movies, built a business empire, and appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. Her at times girlish soprano notwithstanding, she was anything but the “dumb blonde” invoked in the title of her 1966 single.

    “I’ve created this and played it up — the makeup, the whole persona,” Ms. Parton said, alluding to her plastic surgeries as well as her colloquial “Dollyisms” in a 2002 interview with the Times.

    “But this isn’t all I am,” she added. “It’s not even most of what I am. Hopefully people can see beneath the hair to know there’s a brain, beneath the boobs to know there’s a heart and behind all the other stuff to know there’s some talent.”

    Inducted into both the country music and rock ’n’ roll halls of fame, Ms. Parton was the top-ranking female singer on country radio from 1967 to 1993, and had a total of 25 No. 1 country singles.

    Her early breakthrough came in 1967 when she was hired as the “girl singer” on The Porter Wagoner Show, a syndicated country music television variety program. Several years later, she had No. 1 country hits with records including “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.”

    Both songs were among about 3,000 titles she published in her lifetime, hundreds of which have been recorded by other artists, including Tina Turner, Norah Jones, the White Stripes, Merle Haggard, RuPaul, and Whitney Houston.

    Featured in the 1992 movie The Bodyguard, Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” spent 14 weeks at the top of the pop chart. The song had previously been a No. 1 country single twice, in versions released by Ms. Parton in 1974 and 1982.

    With Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, Ms. Parton blazed a trail for women in country music, inspiring such contemporaries as Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, as well as latter-day hitmakers including Carrie Underwood, Kacey Musgraves, and Taylor Swift. She recorded a pair of albums, Trio and Trio II, with Ronstadt and Harris.

    “I can’t imagine anybody, especially in country, who doesn’t try to emulate Dolly in some way,” Harris said on the occasion of Ms. Parton’s Kennedy Center Honors award in 2006.

    Ms. Parton was one of country music’s greatest ambassadors, but she also collaborated widely with artists outside traditional Nashville circles, including Mavis Staples, Queen Latifah, Julio Iglesias, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. “Islands in the Stream,” a triple platinum-selling duet Ms. Parton recorded with Kenny Rogers, topped both the country and pop charts in 1983. (The song was written by Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.)

    Stylistically, Ms. Parton’s music ran the gamut: mountain bluegrass and soul-inflected countrypolitan, disco-era pop and covers of classic rock touchstones written by Neil Young and Led Zeppelin — all of it rendered indelible by her irrepressible spirit and alternately keening and gossamer soprano drawl.

    She wrote unabashedly, in simple Southern vernacular, about growing up as the daughter of an illiterate sharecropper.

    “I’ve seen Daddy’s hands break open and bleed / And I’ve seen him work ’til he’s stiff as a board,” she sang over wistful harmonica and acoustic guitar in “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad).” “I’ve seen Mama layin’ in sufferin’ and sickness / In need of a doctor we couldn’t afford. / Anything at all was more than we had / In the good old days when times were bad.”

    In “Coat of Many Colors,” maybe her most beloved original, Ms. Parton plumbed childhood feelings of pride and humiliation. In this case, the coat in question — quilted from rags and originally a source of delight and the expression of a mother’s love — becomes an object of ridicule when Dolly’s classmates poke fun at her for wearing it to school.

    So with patches on my britches

    And holes in both my shoes,

    In my coat of many colors

    I hurried off to school

    Just to find the others laughing

    And making fun of me

    In my coat of many colors

    My Mama made for me

    “That little song is like a world of things,” Ms. Parton said of “Coat of Many Colors” in Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics (2020), written with Robert K. Oermann. “It teaches about bullying, about love, about acceptance, about good parents. That little story has even been written into a schoolbook to teach children about being different.”

    Empathy was a hallmark of Ms. Parton’s songwriting, perhaps nowhere so much as in “Down From Dover” and “Daddy Come Get Me,” harrowing Southern gothic ballads about teen pregnancy and how patriarchy blames and victimizes young women.

    Assertive women populated Ms. Parton’s songs, whether through her protofeminist rewrite of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel No. 8)” or by advocating parity in the bedroom (“Touch Your Woman”) and in the workplace (“9 to 5”).

    “It’s a rich man’s game / No matter what they call it / And you spend your life / Putting money in his wallet,” Ms. Parton sang, with a mixture of fury and resolve, in the 1980 pink-collar comedy 9 to 5. Besides writing and performing the movie’s theme song, a No. 1 pop and country hit, she also starred in the film as a beleaguered secretary drudging for a sexist boss, alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.

    Ms. Parton would go on to star in other films, among them The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), with Burt Reynolds; Steel Magnolias (1989), with Julia Roberts and Shirley MacLaine; and Straight Talk (1992), with James Woods.

    In 1976, she became the first woman in country music to host her own syndicated TV series; a decade later, she had an hourlong variety show on ABC. But for all her reach and command as an entertainer — including her ubiquitous appearances on TV talk shows and specials — Ms. Parton viewed herself, first and foremost, as a songwriter.

    “Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast,” she told the Times in 2002. “I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder. I write every day, even when I’m on a plane, in the tub or on the bus. It burns in me.”

    She continued: “Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out. Not everything I write is good, but it’s all good for me — like therapy.”

    Dolly Rebecca Parton was born Jan. 19, 1946, the fourth of 12 children of Robert Lee and Avie Lee (Owens) Parton, in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Sevier County, Tenn. Her father was a tenant farmer, and her mother was a homemaker who sang old Anglo-Celtic ballads and hymns while doing housework.

    The Partons were so poor that Dolly’s father had to pay the doctor who attended her birth with a sack of cornmeal. Ms. Parton may have grown up without plumbing, heat, electricity, and other modern conveniences, but she always insisted that she also grew up happy, and that music offered her a refuge from want.

    “Most of us in the household learned to play early on,” she said in Dolly Parton, Songteller. “Every time anybody showed up, any uncle or aunt who knew how to play an instrument, I’d have them show me how to play a little bit on the banjo, the guitar, the autoharp or whatever instrument was around.”

    When she was 5 or so, she wrote her first song, a ditty about a corncob doll with corn-silk hair called “Little Tiny Tasseltop.” She started singing on radio and on TV at 10, on the Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour in Knoxville, Tenn., securing bookings with the help of her uncle Bill Owens, who also bought her her first guitar. The two would go on to write many songs together.

    Ms. Parton made her recording debut in 1959, the same year she made her first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry. In 1962, she signed a songwriting deal with Tree International Publishing (now part of Sony Music Publishing). Two years later, she became the first person in her family to graduate from high school.

    In 1966, Ms. Parton married Carl Dean, an asphalt contractor who shunned the limelight. The couple had met two years earlier, at a laundromat in Nashville, when Ms. Parton was 18. Dean died in 2025.

    Ms. Parton is survived by six of her siblings: Willadeene Parton, Robert Lee Parton Jr., Stella Parton, Cassie Parton, Freida Parton, and Rachel Ann Parton George.

    In 1965, Ms. Parton signed a recording contract with Monument Records, not long before she and her uncle wrote two Top 10 country songs for singer Bill Phillips. She released the first of her roughly 90 Top 40 country hits — “Dumb Blonde,” a plucky denunciation of female stereotypes — in 1966.

    In 1967, she began her seven-year tenure with The Porter Wagoner Show. She and Wagoner would go on to release 21 hit duets together, including “Holding On to Nothin’” (1968) and “Just Someone I Used to Know” (1969).

    But with the arrival of the 1970s — and in no small part because of the national exposure she received on Wagoner’s show — Ms. Parton started to eclipse her employer in popularity.

    The tension that resulted was further aggravated when she began steadily producing No. 1 country singles such as “Joshua” and “Jolene.” Ms. Parton parted ways with Wagoner in 1974 to concentrate on her solo career, but not before writing “I Will Always Love You” as an expression of gratitude and farewell.

    The separation initially proved difficult for Ms. Parton, both emotionally and financially, but it also opened doors to new opportunities like the chance to host her own TV show. She was named female artist of the year by the Country Music Association in each of the two years (1975 and 1976) after her break with Wagoner.

    Embracing a more pop approach than she had earlier in her career, Ms. Parton continued her ascendance on the charts in the late ’70s with blockbuster hits including “Here You Come Again” and “Heartbreaker.” Both were No. 1 country singles that crossed over to the pop Top 40. The Country Music Association awarded her its top honor, entertainer of the year, in 1978.

    After her 1980 recording of “9 to 5” earned her two Grammy Awards and an Oscar nomination, Ms. Parton turned her attention to movies, TV appearances, and the development, in the mid-1980s, of Dollywood, her Smoky Mountain theme park, among other business ventures.

    In 1987, she released the first of her two albums with Ronstadt and Harris, the platinum-selling Trio. She hosted Saturday Night Live in 1989 and teamed up with Lynn and Wynette to record the album Honky Tonk Angels in 1993.

    She published her memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, a New York Times bestseller, in 1994. The next year, she established the Imagination Library, a philanthropic endeavor through which more than 200 million books have been distributed to babies and young children. A show about her life, Dolly: A True Original Musical, is scheduled to open on Broadway in early 2027.

    Endowed with a surfeit of creativity and an unflagging work ethic, Ms. Parton admitted in interviews to sleeping as few as three hours a night. She was nominated for more than 50 Grammy Awards, 10 of which she won, along with being recognized for lifetime achievement by the Recording Academy in 2011.

    Ms. Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2005. In 2022, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

    But perhaps even more remarkable than the profusion of accolades and awards was Ms. Parton’s unstinting generosity of spirit — her commitment, born of deep religious convictions and an immense heart, to seeing the humanity in all people.

    Ms. Parton not only sang the traditional Southern gospel music her mother taught her; she also wrote and sang “Travelin’ Thru,” an Oscar-nominated song from Transamerica, the 2005 movie about a transgender woman seeking to connect with her son. In 2017, Parton collaborated with Miley Cyrus, her goddaughter, to record “Rainbowland,” a tribute to gay pride and liberation.

    “You have to accept everything and everybody,” she said in Songteller, talking about the lessons to be learned about open-mindedness and inclusion from “Coat of Many Colors.”

    Time and again in her career, Ms. Parton reflected on her impoverished upbringing and how she followed her dreams to escape it. “I wanted to be free,” she told Rolling Stone in 1977. “I had my songs to sing, I had an ambition, and it burned inside me.”

    She added: “It was something I knew would take me out of the mountains. I knew I could see worlds beyond the Smoky Mountains.”

  • Dolly Parton, music star, actor and beloved figure who spanned generations has died at 80

    Dolly Parton, music star, actor and beloved figure who spanned generations has died at 80

    Dolly Parton, the country music icon whose soaring vibrato vocals, poignant songwriting and sparkling costumes defined her rise from a log cabin in the Tennessee mountains to the height of stardom and acclaim, has died. She was 80 years old.

    Known for her curvy physique, massive blonde wigs and skin-tight outfits that served her self-deprecating wit, she was among the most beloved personalities in music and beyond — the rare celebrity whose appeal transcended generations, geography and politics.

    She wrote hundreds of songs, including classics like “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “I Will Always Love You,” that totaled more than 100 million worldwide sales and more than 1 billion online streams. Parton, who plucked bejeweled banjos, guitar and dulcimers with her long fingernails during performances, was a generous philanthropist and successful businesswoman whose projects included a theme park in the Smoky Mountain foothills near her birthplace.

    Her career was forever influenced by her upbringing as one of 12 children born into what she called a “dirt poor” Tennessee family. She started her education nonprofit, Imagination Library, to send free books to children in Tennessee because her father, who quit school to work on the farm, struggled to learn to read.

    Parton’s first musical performances were in church, where her grandfather was a preacher. By age 10, she was learning guitar and singing on local television shows. At 13, she appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where Johnny Cash introduced her as “a little girl here from up in East Tennessee.”

    With a suitcase of songs, she followed her uncle, Bill Owens, also a songwriter, to Nashville after graduating high school in 1964. Fred Foster, who produced Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson and more, saw her potential and got her songs cut by other artists, as well as recording and releasing Parton singing her own material. By the mid-1970s, Parton was a Nashville queen.

    A key collaboration with Porter Wagoner

    Parton’s partnership with Porter Wagoner, a pencil-thin pompadoured star with flashy rhinestone outfits, was key to her career. She honed her acting skills on his syndicated TV show and he advocated for her to get a record deal at RCA. Their first duet, “The Last Thing On My Mind,” was released in 1967, the same year she started her own publishing company.

    While their duets were often big radio hits, Parton’s solo singles didn’t chart as high at first. With Wagoner as a co-producer, she began to adjust her country warble to a more polished, pop-leaning style.

    She got her first No. 1 solo single with “Joshua,” and reached the Top 5 with the ballad “Coat of Many Colors,” about how her mother sewed together scraps of clothes to make a coat Parton wore “so proudly” even as her peers mocked her for being poor. The song, with its Biblical references and ode to maternal love, was later made into a children’s book and a TV movie.

    In 1973, she had the hit that made her career — “Jolene,” a country music standard with its steady, churning rhythm and Parton’s repeated delivery of the title as she pleads for the woman not to steal her man.

    The song topped the country charts, crossing over to pop and later being released internationally, opening up new audiences for Parton. “Jolene” is one of her most covered compositions, including by Miley Cyrus (Parton’s goddaughter), Olivia Newton-John and The White Stripes.

    She left Wagoner’s show in 1974, amid reports of squabbling between the two, although they continued to record together and Wagoner stayed her producer for years after that. But the relationship turned litigious when Wagoner sued her in 1979 for millions in management fees and royalties.

    A pop crossover star

    She followed “Jolene” with a huge hit in 1974, “I Will Always Love You,” an ode and farewell to Wagoner that helped her win the Country Music Association’s female vocalist of the year back-to-back in 1975 and 1976. She famously turned down Elvis Presley, who wanted to record it, because she would not share publishing rights.

    Decades later, Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” became a smash for the soundtrack of her 1992 film “The Bodyguard,” and broke sales records. Houston won a Grammy for her performance in 1994, presented to her by Parton.

    “Here You Come Again,” a pop crossover hit and one of the few she didn’t write, further established Parton as a multi-genre entertainer and brought her first Grammy Award in 1979.

    “A lot of people thought I had totally lost my mind,” she told The Associated Press in 1979 of changing her singing style. “But I had no fear of change. I expected success, but I was braced for failure. I didn’t care if people thought I was wrong. In my own heart, I knew I was doing the right thing.”

    Parton’s other crossover hits included the title song from “9 to 5,” the 1980 comedy starring Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin; and her duet with longtime friend Kenny Rogers, “Islands in the Stream,” written by brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees. In 1987, she collaborated with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris on the million-selling “Trio” album.

    Down home charm

    For millions of fans, she was simply “Dolly,” a mixture of Southern charm, humor and glamour. But she was also considered a feminist role model for holding the reins of her own career, writing her own songs, owning her content and looking after her finances in an entertainment world dominated by men.

    Parton was open to making fun of herself; when she hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 1989 she told the writers that her only restrictions were she wouldn’t curse and she wouldn’t make fun of Jesus. She regularly joked about her breasts or her dumb blonde appearance, but with a wink that she was the one controlling the laughs. In the memoir “My Life So Far,” Fonda remembered Parton’s way with a wisecrack, “usually high raunch,” and a laugh that was “somewhere between a girl’s giggle, an explosive shriek, and a cascade of little bells.”

    After her gown split down the front when she won CMA’s entertainer of the year in 1978, Parton quipped: “My Daddy said that’s what I got for putting 50 pounds of mud in a five-pound bag.”

    Throughout her career, she embraced her glamorous style, often wearing custom curve-hugging rhinestone dresses and bodysuits even if they drew tsk-tsks from others in the industry. Her look was always a part of her larger musical business plan.

    “I knew my songs were good even if I had been ugly as sin,” she told the AP in 2014. “So I thought, ‘Well, I would have probably chose to look this way even if I had been a waitress.’ I mean, this is my look. I mean, I like a lot of makeup. I like a lot of hair. I like flashy clothes. I like to show it off. But that’s just who I am.”

    She married Carl Dean, an asphalt paving contractor, in the mid-1960s; they were together until his death in 2025 at the age of 82. Though rarely seen in public, he was an influence on her career. She told NPR that she wrote “Jolene” about a flirty bank teller who seemed to take an interest in Dean.

    ‘9 to 5’ to Hollywood and Broadway

    In her first major film role, Parton played alongside Fonda and Tomlin as office workers who rebel against their tyrannical boss in “9 to 5.” Critic Roger Ebert called her a “natural-born movie star” and the title song earned her two Grammy Awards and a ranking of 78 on the American Film Institute’s list of top 100 movie songs. Starring roles in the “The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas” and “Steel Magnolias” followed.

    “I never thought of myself as a movie star,” she told AP’s Bob Thomas in 1979. “I knew I’d be a star, but as a singer or as a writer of songs or books or poetry. I wanted to be a famous performer and wear flashy clothes, but singing in movies was not one of my ambitions. My family lived in the mountains and we didn’t see movies.”

    Her love affair with TV and film continued for decades, with appearances alongside Cyrus on “Hannah Montana” and adaptions of her music for Christmas specials, films and streaming series. She also became an author, her books ranging from the memoir “Dolly” to a bestselling novel co-authored by James Patterson, “Run, Rose, Run,”

    The stage adaptation “9 to 5: The Musical” debuted in 2009, and “DOLLY: A True Original Musical” had been set to open in December 2026.

    United States of Dolly

    Beyond her music, Parton’s most lasting legacy might be her generosity and broad appeal.

    When a deadly wildfire swept through the Smokies in 2016, she held an all-star telethon and set up a foundation that sent monthly checks to residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed.

    She opened up her Dollywood theme park in East Tennessee, a major economic driver in Appalachia that draws tourists from around the country, and established the Dollywood Foundation. She wrote books and memoirs, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and was given a lifetime achievement award by the Recording Academy. She was selected for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2025.

    With 55 Grammy nominations and 10 wins, Parton is the third-most nominated woman in Grammy history, only behind Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.

    Parton spanned social and political divides, through multiple generations of fans, urban and rural and in between. In tumultuous election years, it wasn’t uncommon to see “Dolly for President” shirts. But she was strict in not voicing her own political beliefs, often turning aside questions about presidents, candidates, policies and other controversies.

    “I don’t do politics,” Parton told host Jad Abumrad on his hit podcast “Dolly Parton’s America.”

    “I have too many fans on both sides of the fence. Of course, I have my opinion about everything, but I learned years ago to keep your mouth shut about things.”

    When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation sent out a ballot in 2022 with her name on it, though she said she felt she hadn’t earned it, the voters answered with a “Hello, Dolly.” Parton showed up to the induction ceremony, performed and then put out a rock album.

  • Canada to announce retaliatory tariffs as Trump tells its leaders to ‘fall in line’

    Canada to announce retaliatory tariffs as Trump tells its leaders to ‘fall in line’

    TORONTO — Canada will announce retaliatory tariffs against the United States on Tuesday after relations deteriorated sharply Monday, with President Donald Trump telling Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face consequences “far WORSE” than existing tariffs and Prime Minister Mark Carney accusing Washington of trying to subordinate Canada.

    Trump also threatened new 50% tariffs on Canadian vehicles, auto parts and steel, while Carney said U.S. trade demands showed Washington wanted to “destroy our major industries,” including autos, steel and aluminum.

    Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and three other Cabinet ministers are also expected Tuesday morning to share details of supports for workers affected by tariffs. Carney said earlier Monday that Canada may need to move away from matching U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar and instead use more targeted retaliation aimed at protecting Canadian workers and businesses.

    “An attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States” is “not something we’re going to accept,” Carney said.

    Carney was even more blunt in French.

    “We learned during the negotiations that the Americans want to destroy our major industries, including autos, steel and aluminum,” Carney said. “That was one of the main reasons we said no. It was a bad deal.”

    The fiery words from both sides show how U.S.-Canada relations have deteriorated since Carney walked away from trade negotiations with the Trump administration late Friday, triggering the president’s threatened 50% tariffs the next day on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.

    Canada and the United States share one of the world’s largest trading relationships, with deeply integrated supply chains across autos, energy, agriculture and manufacturing, making a prolonged trade fight potentially costly for businesses and workers on both sides of the border.

    Carney cast doubt on the U.S.’s dependability, saying Canada was finding reliable partners “everywhere in the world, except in the United States. Except in the United States. And Russia.”

    Trump unleashes personal attacks on Canadian leaders

    On Monday, Trump came back with further tariffs, warning that he would impose them on Canada’s auto industry beginning next year.

    “Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years,” Trump wrote on social media, criticizing what he called the country’s “ridiculously high tariffs” on American farmers.

    Carney said Washington’s auto-sector proposals would gradually have the effect of dismantling Canadian production.

    “This is the most successful automotive partnership in history,” Carney said, referring to the deeply integrated Canada-U.S. industry.

    Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford unleashed his own tirade. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said Trump had underestimated Canadians’ willingness to endure economic pain rather than give in to U.S. pressure.

    “We’re all in,” Ford said. “Up here, we’re at a fever pitch; everyone’s in for an economic war. They know they’re going to have to sacrifice.”

    Trump responded in a social media post by attacking Ford personally, calling him “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford,” and once again referring to Canada’s prime minister as “Governor Carney.”

    Ford dismissed the insults: “If you think an insult from him hurts me? Well, bring it on, buddy, I’m ready.”

    Ford is a Progressive Conservative whose party differs from that of Carney, a Liberal, but the two underscore broad political unity in Canada over the trade fight with Trump.

    Ford threatens critical minerals and electricity

    Ford said “everything is on the table” if the dispute worsens, including cutting off electricity and critical minerals from Ontario.

    Critical minerals are increasingly important to U.S. national security and manufacturing. The Pentagon has sought more secure supplies of minerals used in military aircraft, missiles, munitions and electronics as Washington tries to reduce reliance on China, which dominates the mining or processing of several strategically important minerals.

    Ford said Canada should also consider increasingly severe retaliation if Trump continues targeting Canadian industries, including oil and potash, while Ontario could raise electricity prices or stop sending power south.

    “We power 1.5 million homes and businesses,” Ford said. “Everything’s on the table. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

    Ford has used electricity as leverage before. During an earlier phase of the dispute, Ontario imposed a 25% surcharge on electricity exported to Michigan, Minnesota and New York. Trump responded by threatening to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum before both sides backed away.

    Auto industry becomes a central battleground

    Ford accused Trump of not simply seeking a better trade deal but aiming to hollow out Canadian industries and move production south.

    Ford said Trump wants to make Canada a vassal state.

    “He wants to bleed out every single sector and bring them down to the U.S.,” Ford said.

    The auto sector is especially important to Ontario, the center of Canada’s vehicle manufacturing industry. Plants and suppliers in Ontario are tightly integrated with factories in Michigan and other U.S. states, with parts routinely crossing the border multiple times during production.

    Automakers including Ford, General Motors and Stellantis operate major assembly plants in Ontario, and the wider supply chain supports tens of thousands of jobs. Trump’s new threat of a 50% tariff on Canadian vehicles and parts puts that sector directly at the center of the escalating dispute.

    U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Monday that “the only reason Canada has auto production in the first place” was because of the 1960s Auto Pact, under which Canada used access to its market to encourage vehicle production north of the border.

    Ford says he opposed preliminary deal

    Ford also disclosed that he had opposed the preliminary agreement Carney was considering before Canada walked away from negotiations, and that he was unwilling to restore American liquor to Ontario store shelves as part of an agreement.

    “I wasn’t going to put the booze back on the shelves,” Ford said. “I was ready to go out there and call a press conference … and say I’m not buckling over.”

    Ford said he understood Washington had sought language late in the negotiations that would have restricted Canada’s ability to negotiate trade agreements with other countries without U.S. approval. Carney has called that demand unacceptable and a question of Canadian sovereignty.

    Carney said the dispute also exposed a deeper divide over language and culture, saying protections for French and Canadian culture that Washington views as trade irritants are considered fundamental rights in Canada.

    “Who does he think he is?” Ford said of Trump. “You gotta be kidding.”

  • Deportees who refused to exit a U.S. flight in Liberia are sent to Equatorial Guinea

    Deportees who refused to exit a U.S. flight in Liberia are sent to Equatorial Guinea

    DAKAR, Senegal — Six people who were deported by the United States to Liberia last week resisted getting off the plane and instead were sent to Equatorial Guinea, another ‌African nation that signed a third-country deportation agreement with the Trump administration, a person on the plane and a lawyer in contact with the six said Monday.

    Under a series of often secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to two dozen countries that aren’t their own as it pushes ahead with its immigration crackdown, advocates say. Immigration lawyers say the practice is being used as a legal loophole to indirectly return some asylum seekers to countries they fled.

    The group who refused to get off the plane in Liberia on Thursday include four Cuban men, a Brazilian man, and a Cameroonian woman, the person and lawyer said.

    A Honduran deportee aboard the flight said the group refused to disembark, saying Liberia was “not their country” and that they would face danger there. They were then separated from the others, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.

    He said the other passengers got off in Liberia because they feared officers would force them.

    Meredyth Yoon, litigation director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said the deportees who resisted leaving the plane in Liberia were told they would be returned to the United States but instead were flown to Malabo city in Equatorial Guinea.

    “It was a really heartbreaking and chaotic scene when they arrived in Malabo on Thursday,” Yoon said.

    Some arrived in chains and in extreme distress, she said, including the Cameroonian woman and one of the Cuban men, who Yoon said has a large abdominal growth and uses a colostomy bag that must be drained regularly.

    There is no medical staff at the hotel in Equatorial Guinea where the six are being held, alongside around 40 other deported migrants, she added.

    Conditions at the hotel have worsened in recent months, Yoon said, with food sometimes withheld and guards accused of threatening, beating, and choking some of the migrants.

    Equatorial Guinea’s government did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

    Under an opaque $7.5 million deal with the Trump administration, Equatorial Guinea’s all-powerful president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has turned the hotel owned by his family into a prison for asylum seekers deported from the U.S.

  • Zillow and Redfin resolve litigation over deal FTC alleges suppresses rental listings competition

    Zillow and Redfin resolve litigation over deal FTC alleges suppresses rental listings competition

    The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with Zillow and Redfin to resolve the regulator’s claim that the companies made an illegal deal to suppress competition in online rental advertising.

    The FTC said Monday that it filed a proposed order with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It essentially requires Redfin to restart its standalone rental housing listings business, which the commission says will restore competition in the market for rental property listings. The settlement also resolves litigation brought by state attorneys general in Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and Washington.

    “This settlement delivers better, quicker, more certain results for both renters and property management companies than we would have been able to achieve after prevailing at trial, including firm and enforceable commitments by Redfin to relaunch its rentals advertising business,” Daniel Guarnera, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement.

    In its complaint filed almost a year ago, the FTC alleged that in exchange for $100 million and other compensation from Zillow, Redfin had agreed to shut down its internet listings and exclusively repost Zillow’s apartment listings, transition its customers to Zillow, and stay out of the apartment listings market for up to nine years.

    The commission argued that the companies’ February 2025 pact violated federal antitrust laws and could reduce incentives for competition, leading to higher prices and fewer choices for multifamily rental advertising customers.

    Zillow and Redfin said their agreement was not anticompetitive and benefited renters and property managers alike.

    The FTC’s proposed order requires Redfin to restart its rental listings business and hire enough staff to maintain it within six months of the order being finalized, or face financial penalties. The FTC said Redfin fired hundreds of employees shortly after announcing its deal with Zillow.

    And while Redfin will continue to syndicate Zillow’s listings, it will be free to seek out and advertise non-Zillow listings, according to the FTC.

    In a statement Monday, Seattle-based Zillow said it “has consistently maintained the partnership with Redfin is pro-consumer and procompetitive, and we’re pleased to have found a resolution that enables its continuation.”

    A spokesperson for Redfin, which was acquired by Detroit-based mortgage giant Rocket Cos. last year, said Monday that the agreement “allows us to maintain our rental partnership with Zillow through at least 2030 while building and investing in a standalone rentals business of our own.”

  • Supreme Court clears the way for Trump mail voting order in advance of midterms

    Supreme Court clears the way for Trump mail voting order in advance of midterms

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to move ahead with his executive order restricting mail-in voting, though it remains unclear how much his administration can implement before the fast-approaching midterm elections.

    The decision appears to leave room for additional court challenges that could further slow Trump’s order. The U.S. Postal Service laid out how it would implement the order last week, but time is running short to impose major changes with some states beginning to send mail ballots to voters in just a few weeks.

    The Supreme Court’s three liberal-leaning justices dissented from the unsigned order.

    Mail balloting has long been a favorite target for Trump, who has claimed that it breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and his own use of the voting method.

    The case could be one of multiple voting-related challenges before the justices. The Justice Department had filed an emergency appeal asking the high court to allow work on implementing the changes before the midterms.

    Trump’s executive order, signed in March, calls on his administration to create lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists.

    Democratic officials in 23 states, including Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia sued to block the order. They argued that the Constitution gives states and Congress the power to run elections, and Trump’s changes could lead to chaos and partisan abuse.

    “The consequences of allowing such transformative changes to take effect so close to this fall’s elections would be extreme,” attorneys for the states wrote. Dozens of state and local election officials weighed in, asking the justices to leave the order frozen while election preparations are already underway.

    In response to today’s ruling, Pennsylvania Gov. Shapiro posted on X:

    “Not so fast. Today’s SCOTUS decision does NOT deal with the substance of Trump’s unconstitutional Executive Order and does not mean his illegal attempt to restrict mail-in voting will go forward. Donald Trump does not run elections here in Pennsylvania — or in any state. We’ll see the Trump Administration in court. In the meantime, I’ll keep defending Pennsylvanians’ right to free, fair, and secure elections.”

    A judge in Massachusetts had blocked the plan for the midterm elections in those states. An appeals court upheld her decision. She later granted a second order blocking it nationwide.

    The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court on procedural grounds in late July, arguing that the states sued too soon. They also pointed to another ruling out of Washington, where a judge allowed Trump’s order to proceed. An appeals court backed that decision, while still leaving room for future court action if the changes are implemented.

    Federal attorneys argued that the Massachusetts order “blocks the government’s ability to finalize and implement the President’s proposed policies to promote election integrity for the upcoming federal elections in November.”

    A dozen Republican-leaning states supported the federal government in their own appeal before the high court, saying states would have input on the final voter lists.

    The Supreme Court has previously ruled against Trump-backed arguments on mail-in ballots, finding in June that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day. That case was decided after full briefing and arguments, rather than on the court’s emergency docket.

    Trump has blamed mail voting — without credible evidence — for his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. He has promoted the proposed changes in his executive order as safeguards to keep non-U. S. citizens from voting.

    He’s also repeatedly pressed for the passage of the legislation that requires proof of citizenship to vote. Noncitizen voting has been shown to be rare, and is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.

    Using mail ballots has become increasingly popular with voters of both parties, with about 30% of all ballots cast that way during the 2024 presidential election, according to federal data. The process also is secure. A 2025 Brookings Institution study found only about four cases of fraud out of every 10 million mail ballots cast.

  • Trump’s ‘economic D-Day’ threats become warnings for countries to sever financial ties with Iran

    Trump’s ‘economic D-Day’ threats become warnings for countries to sever financial ties with Iran

    WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a new round of sanctions aimed at Iran on Monday and warned every country that does business with the Islamic Republic to sever those financial ties or face retaliation from the United States.

    President Donald Trump’s pledge last week to unleash an “economic D-Day” against Tehran turned out to be new warnings to cut off Iran from the rest of the global economy. Asked why the U.S. was not imposing secondary sanctions on Iran’s trading partners, Bessent told reporters he wanted countries to have an opportunity to shift away from Iran before it was too late.

    “Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?” Bessent said.

    The Trump administration is struggling to find an off-ramp nearly six months into an unpopular war with an increasingly obstinate Iran. Washington had promised new sanctions would put even more pressure on an Iranian economy already battered by previous penalties and a U.S. naval blockade.

    But the announcement Monday provided little detail and did not name which countries could face secondary sanctions. China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates are Iran’s largest trade partners.

    “We are level-setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are. They know who they are,” Bessent said. “So when the hammer of U.S. Treasury actions falls upon them, they will have no one to blame but themselves.”

    Dubbing the campaign “Operation Economic Outcast,” Bessent said Trump has been “making phone calls to world leaders with specific requests to cease their interactions” with Iran and has already seen results.

    The UAE announced last week that it was suspending all trade, commercial exchanges, and financial transactions with Iran until further notice after a reported missile attack on the Gulf country. Bessent said the UAE decision was “not a coincidence.”

    Shortly before the announcement, Iranian parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said the U.S. is not in an economic position to further restrict Tehran’s relations with other countries.

    “Iran’s trading partners, both in the media and through messages sent to us, have made it clear that they don’t take these statements into account anywhere,” Qalibaf, who has been Iran’s lead negotiator over the past six months, posted on X.

    Bessent is pressed on what new campaign means for China

    Asked whether the U.S. would target China, Bessent said, “No one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions,” despite the fragile trade truce in place between the world’s two largest economies.

    “If they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted,” he added.

    Experts say the U.S. is likely to carefully calibrate its actions on China, just a month before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit the U.S.

    How much the announcement matters “depends on the aggressiveness with which President Trump is willing to enforce it,” said Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy adviser for U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group. “Thus far, despite threatening severe economic consequences for countries that do business with Iran, he has largely given China a pass.”

    The Treasury Department said Monday that it was imposing sanctions on nearly 60 Iran-linked entities, accusing them of roles in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, cyber activities, and oil shipments.

    That includes Hong Kong-based Sweet Ocean Industrial Limited and associated people and businesses, which were accused of helping Iran acquire sensitive goods such as laser optics equipment. Also penalized was China-based Shenzhen Huamei, which is a service provider for the Iran-based logistics company BRE Line, as well as BRE Line’s branch in Hong Kong, for allegedly supporting the missile and nuclear programs.

    Iranian currency falls to a record low

    Hours before Bessent’s announcement, Iran’s currency hit a record low.

    The rial dropped to 2.02 million to the U.S. dollar as trading opened on currency markets. Iran’s official Central Bank rate stood at around 1.5 million rials to the dollar, but the market rate is what most Iranians pay.

    The currency had already been under pressure before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, as Iran faced double-digit inflation and negative growth. The rial has repeatedly hit new lows as nearly six months of war have taken an even greater toll.

    Iranians find daily staples increasingly unaffordable. Since the war began, rice is up some 60% and beef prices are more than 150% higher. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that gross domestic product will contract more than 5%.

    Still, economic pressure has not yet translated into political pressure. Iran retains a key strategic advantage: Its attacks and threats on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have brought traffic in the vital waterway to a near halt, damaging the world economy and heaping pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of congressional elections.

    The war, as a result, has devolved into a fight over who controls the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil transited before the conflict. Iran is now refusing to fully reopen it unless it can charge ships.

    Iran and Oman, which is on the opposite side of the strait, are reportedly in the final stages of agreeing on a plan for joint management of the waterway. Oman’s foreign minister is set to visit Iran on Tuesday.

    Pakistani delegation visits Iran

    Pakistan, which played a key role in brokering a 60-day ceasefire in June, sent a high-level delegation to Iran on Monday to encourage the U.S. and Iran to return to negotiations, two senior officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

    The military confirmed only Field Marshal Asim Munir’s visit, saying it was aimed at de-escalating tensions in the region.

    Trump spoke with Munir ahead of the army chief’s visit to Iran, according to a person familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm a private conversation. Reuters, citing Pakistani sources, first reported the call.

    Munir met Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni in Tehran, according to the two senior officials. Munir was accompanied by Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and other officials. Munir was expected to remain in Iran overnight and meet the Iranian president and other senior officials before returning to Pakistan.

    His previous visit to Tehran in May helped pave the way for a memorandum of understanding signed by the U.S. and Iran in June.

    In downtown Tehran, 73-year-old Sadegh Mahmoudi did not hold out hope for a resolution. He joined a line of about a dozen people to purchase U.S. dollars with his remaining savings to hedge against further declines.

    “There is no hope for a deal and peace,” he said.